ecosystems

Today’s announcement by Dow Chemical that it will launch a multi-year effort to measure and track the business value of ecosystem services represents a small step for a company, a giant leap for critters of all kinds.

A "media" model composed of paid, owned and earned efforts is nothing new—however it’s useful to think about this landscape in tandem with the different ways we interact and engage which are enabled through technology. There are essentially three forms of digital engagement which can often overlap (engagement in a single initiative can include all three types) but each form can tend to dominate the experience. It’s important to remember that the type of engagement is contextual to what a participant wants to accomplish.

Originally posted on the Collaboratory
From a holistic perspective, we talk about the need for organizations to become more socially calibrated—able to adapt and respond to changes both externally and internally. The three areas where emergent outcomes can manifest are, participation with your customers, collaboration between your employees and optimization in the interactions/transactions between your business and its partners. Digging into customer participation, it’s clear that in a networked economy customers demand engagement, information, support and ultimately, value and ecosystems such as Twitter are beginning to deliver here.

Watch this video by Bruce Nussbaum, BusinessWeek's innovation editor and veteran employee with the company. It's a fascinating illustration of the shifts in business we are seeing in real time. Media outlets in particular have been on the front lines of this shift. As I've said many times before, the Web and its latest social iteration has introduced ultra deep and pervasive niche content and experiences which directly compete with many business models.

We've been doing a bit of thinking on how organizations can re-design themselves as social systems which produce emergent outcomes—that is, results which move business forward and tend to emerge in an organic fashion. Twitter's growth due to end user innovation, an open API, and other drivers are an example of this.

by: Joel Makower

Ecosystems must be viewed as huge capital assets, affected by nearly all development and investment decisions, according to a report released this week.

by: Michael Hoexter

Sustainability has become one of the virtues with which almost every intelligent person and organization wants to associate themselves.

by: Joel Makower

What's a clean earth worth to your company's bottom line?

One of the realities of the world of environmentalism is how much everything is interconnected. You tug on one thread of one ecosystem and another thread unravels.

It’s a classic problem that government agencies have in creating good environmental policy and law: protect the spotted owl but imperil loggers’ jobs; promote economic development in impoverished areas but further stress the local water supply; allow local residents to build nice homes on barrier islands, and reduce hurricane protection for millions.